Is there anything new in this post that I’m missing?

I wonder if the alleged leftists of Lemmy will keep cheering to this.

I don’t mind so much what they did with firing him, but how they did it, and everything since. It just seems extremely unprofessional and disorganized.

This has been regurgitated over and over again in recent days. But what none of the articles talk about, is that for many, and I’d guess actually the majority of people, the editorial part never mattered. I’ve been using and praising Bandcamp for over a decade (first album bought in February 2010), and last week was the first time I ever opened their blog. It’s not bad, but also very clearly not something I’ll miss.

Now, yes, that sucks for people who always read that blog (though I’ve also never once seen a post of them shared anywhere I am). And yeah, Songtradr might turn out to be bad (I used the collection downloader to redownload everything as FLAC after the announcement, just in case), but for me and others like me, it might simply change nothing. And while the stop of BC Friday would suck, one also has to remember that it was a relatively new thing that the old Bandcamp never did for most of its life.

What maters for me: That they keep paying bands and labels their share, keep free streams of un-bought items, and keep a wide array of download formats. If those things stay, then BC did not lose its soul, but stayed true to its core.

Yes.

Just a few days ago, I posted that I’d leave Lemmy, if Beehaw leaves. Since then, I got temp-banned on lemmy.ml for calling fascists fascists, decided that it was the proverbial straw, deleted my instance after 4 months, my backup account, and created a new account on Beehaw that is not subscribing to anything federated, but only local communities. I used Lemmy not because I thought it was amazing, but because I simply hated spez more. But the quality of discourse was low.

One exception was usually posts in Beehaw communities. That, together with some comments in What is the current thinking about what platform Beehaw should be on? Stick with Lemmy or try something else? (the comment chain disappeared with my old account, though), made me create a new account on Beehaw after I left the "Fediverse".

A lot of words to say, I’ll follow Beehaw to whatever software is used, as I treat it like just another small discussion site like tildes or HN anyway.

It’s a reference to the fascists on hexbear and their friends, who all call themselves left and make up a large part of Lemmy. For them, left is anything that’s anti-USA.

I don’t really care, but I find it highly entertaining :D It’s like trash TV for technology fans (and as text, which makes it even better) :D

I totally do not get why people have to try to prove to themselves that masks do not work.

I see it as a failure of politics. It’s been a while now, but IIRC in the US as well people were told that they shouldn’t wear N95, just like we in Europe were told not to wear FFP2. That they are hard to use and best left to professionals. That having a beard makes them useless. Now there was a decent idea behind it, stocks were low and uncertain, and healthcare professionals needed respirators first. But then production ramped up, and they were everywhere, and suddenly those masks are great and everyone should wear them.

That kind of political messaging has to produce conflict.

Here in Germany in my circle (which has people from mid-twenties to 60+, from the North to the center), most people use Signal, with Telegram being a rare outlier. WhatsApp is what everyone uses, though.

From the IDF response.

The potential fines are nothing to scoff at, and reported plans are expensive, so there’s a good chance they’ll try and be compliant.

Now the question is, has anyone here actually had wasabi?

But here's the rub: That tangy paste served up at nearly all sushi bars — even the ones in Japan — is almost certainly an impostor. Far more common than the real thing is a convincing fraud, usually made of ordinary white horseradish, dyed green.

Japan doesn’t even produce enough to fulfill their own demand, I’m almost certain all Wasabi I’ve ever had was fake.

I think the majority of us also don’t want to play tech support.

I’d say this is an amazing result for MS. Not only is their investment mostly Azure credits, so OpenAI is dependent on MS, now they also got Altman and his followers for themselves for more research.

Sidenote in case any of the mods read this:

Kenyan businesses are dropping the world’s favorite mobile money service

Is the original headline, now what I’d have posted is "Kenyan businesses are dropping mobile money service M-Pesa", possibly with "because of increased tax-enforcement", the latter is probably too much editorializing, but the former makes it less clickbait-y and more informational. What kind of editing of original headlines is preferred?

I know what you mean, but FWIW: You probably mean "move fast and break things". "Fail fast" is usually about not hiding/carrying with you potentially bad errors, and instead "fail fast" when you know there’s an issue. It’s an important tool for reliability.

An unrealistic example: Better to fail fast and not start the car at all when there’s abnormal voltage fluctuations, then explode while driving ;)

They believed that the AI safety work they had done was insufficient.

Considering that every new model seems to be getting worse for anything but highly sanitized corporate usage, I’m not sure that I want more AI safety …

For my usage, I use Chat GPT 3.5 turbo with the march checkpoint because I can’t get the current one to stop moralizing about bullshit instead of doing what it’s supposed to (I run two twitch bots with it). GPT4 used to be okay there, but the new preview is now starting to have the same issue with more frequent "I can’t do that Dave"-style answers, though it’s still mostly circumventable with enough prompt massaging, but it is getting harder.

In a year, I don’t see anything but self-hosted models usable for anything not corporate glitz if trajectories hold, so fuck all that AI safety.

My own tips for simple chemicals:

1. Add MSG. Another meaning of MSG besides Monosodium glutamate is "Makes Stuff Good", because besides normal salt and fat, it’s another great flavor enhancer for anything savory. And no, it almost certainly doesn’t give you headaches, that was racist bullshit and has long since been disproven.

2. Baking soda and the Maillard reaction are friends. You know how they tell you, you can’t caramelize onions in 5 minutes? With baking soda, you can. Add a knife’s tip and bam. Just be careful, it also makes them burn far more easily. This also works with meat, where the meat keeps water better and browns more beautifully. One of my favorite uses is for roasting cauliflower, which gets a deeper brown and tastes so much better in cauli mash.

3. Sodium Citrate for cheese sauce. You want creamy cheese sauce? Like for Nachos? Add a teaspoon of sodium citrate to your cheese when melting, and it will all combine without any of the fat separating. It’s best for dips, but it can be used for something like mac & cheese in a pinch, but you’ll get better results there if you make a proper roux.

PDF of the actual publication

Other publications including case studies for specific countries, gender equality reports and more.

If someone thought he was innocent, SBF would probably "well, actually…" them.

There are a lot of people/instances/admins on lemmy who love everything authoritarian fascist Putin does, but call themselves left.

Crazy, the news almost took hackernews down when it broke. MS also was taken by surprise, and today 3 lead researchers resigned. Currently only speculation and no one really knows what’s going on.

I avoid visiting fascist sites, I had enough of that when I selfhosted, and before I blocked hexbear, and saw the cheerleading for civilians being bombed in Ukraine. But good to know they are not totally lost.

Yeah, exactly. But fascist instances like lemmy.ml ban you for such outrageous statements.

Just as an idea: Would be good to have some USA reference in the title.

Not even a mention of lightning? I have no idea if it works as I’ve been hearing both yes and no for several years, but writing such an article without mentioning what at least theoretically would be the solution just seems bad.

Power cost depends. I use a thin client (J4105 CPU), and it idles at 4W. Idling is what it does 95% of the day. That power usage is lower than my modem, and a drop on the bucket compared to my (relatively low power) desktop PC. And I say that as a German who pays a disgusting 0.4€ per kWh.

That some think feminism means female supremacy

Doesn’t help when some feminists think that as well. We have a famous and influential feminist here in Germany (Alice Schwarzer), who did a lot for feminism in 70s and 80s, but now is a reactionary who stands for TERF, censorship, mass surveillance, female supremacy, and "anyone who doesn’t like me is anti-feminist".

This is a bit confusing, how do they know there are over 1500 Israelis who signed? Nothing is stopping me from signing the pledge, the site even encourages me to. But I’m not an Israeli.

It feels like a very recent trend too.

I’m disagreeing there. It was always common in large Reddit communities. And because so many people browse with All on Lemmy instead of subscribed, even small communities have that issue on Lemmy.

almost universally get extremely hostile when I just talk to them about things

There’s a great German word, "Streitkultur (German wikipedia)", roughly "argument culture", but with a positive tinge, about people having a positive argument about differing point of views. And sadly, that is lacking for most people. The lack thereof in politics made me get disgusted and leave politics alone over a decade ago.

I came across a post on instagram that says that Al Yankovic’s 80 million stream on playlist only netted him enough money to buy a sandwich.

It was hyperbole, unless his sandwich costs 200-300k. Which is the reason why his statement was very questionable.

Using anti-competitive tatic to try to eliminate a competitor is literally malicious.

To be fair, it sounds less like eliminating, and more like "carving out a niche", with the competitor being the dominant one. Doesn’t make it great, but at least a bit better ;)

There is no context and nothing specific, as the headline makes it seem.

Politico.eu got bought by Axel Springer, Germany’s Fox News, 2 years ago.

Fair enough.

The week didn’t end too well, while coming back from the first store, my foot started hurting a bit, got worse when going to the 2nd store. Later at home while watching TV, getting up was actively painful, and I had to hobble.

The next day, I used nebenan.de (German nextdoor copycat) to borrow some crutches, and went to the doctor (which required taking the bus, Saturdays normal doctors are closed and the Anlaufpraxis is at the hospital, kinda a non-emergency emergency room). I thought it was a sprained ankle, but apparently only similar and not that bad, no bleeding, and the swelling had already gone down. I got a zinc paste gauze bandage (apparently called Unna's boot in English), that has to stay on for 3 days and can’t get wet (so no showering …)

It helped a bit and since Sunday afternoon I’ve only been needing one of the crutches which gives me a free hand, very convenient ;) This all results in my wife doing more chores, especially the dishes which, so far, has not resulted in disaster ;) I’m still cooking as that mostly works while standing mostly on my left foot.

I do miss running, but the doctor also told me I should probably get new running boots as the current ones are ancient (mostly unused, but material fatigue happens anyway) as that might be related. They should arrive tomorrow, but I’m not sure when I’ll be able to run again. Already missed dancing lessons this Sunday, the ones next Sunday will be the test if everything is fine, and I can start running again on Monday.

As you might be able to tell from this elaborate whining post, I really hate being sick ;)

I’d actually say most data is suited for relational DBs, and that was pretty much what people realized after a few years of the NOSQL hypetrain.

learning about some arcane internet drama,

I know a lot of people are in love with these "I’m a designer and I want you to know it"-sites, but this is a perfect example of why I dislike them: Upon loading, I see a useless animation (I have prefers-reduced-motion enabled), and blank boxes. Only after 5.55 megabytes of font has been downloaded (slightly over 2 seconds), does text show up.

Huh, weird. I have no issues accessing it, but apparently bypass bots like 1ft.io are also blocked. It’s a big Israeli newspaper.

Heh:

The OpenAI tussle is between the faction who think Skynet will kill them if they build it, and the faction who think Roko's Basilisk will torture them if they don't build it hard enough.

-- https://mastodon.social/@jef/111443214445962022